What Biden does not say about the withdrawal from Afghanistan

The last US soldier left like a ghost in the night and a Taliban government of "consensus" is announced: it is the Doha road map, but Biden finds it hard to justify himself

In the case of the United States, history repeats itself both as a tragedy and as a farce. They waged war against Bin Laden and Mullah Omar and now in power in Kabul there is the Afghan family of the Haqqani, Osama's best friends who yesterday brought back to the country Amin ul Haq, an old comrade of the Al Qaeda leader. . In short, the photo of the jihadist family comes together and is immediately sent to the White House. And not by chance: there are over 200 Americans who remain to be brought home and these Taliban must be dealt with.

The last American soldier left like a ghost in the night and a Taliban government of "consensus" is also about to arrive, the signal that in the handing back of the country to the Koranic students, the Doha road map has had a concrete follow-up. Military defeat of the army, disastrous US withdrawal but a political "format" that could find Washington's approval.

Tragedy and farce are intertwined between past and present. While President Biden spoke to the nation yesterday to justify a huge failure, 40 years ago America planned to create a "Vietnamese quagmire" for the USSR in Afghanistan. According to the memoirs of former CIA deputy director Robert Gates, the “Cyclone” operation aimed at arming and financing the Afghan insurgents had been launched months before Soviet troops entered Afghanistan at the request of Kabul.

However, after a 10-year war and immense losses, Soviet forces avoided a humiliating "Vietnamese-style" defeat with an orderly withdrawal concluded on February 15, 1989. Not only that: then Najibullah's pro-Soviet government lasted another three years. , while President Ghani escaped to the Emirates with a lot of money.

That's why the whole thing is a bit tragedy and a bit farce. Americans had long mistrusted the government they themselves held up. Especially since last year Michael D'Andrea, known as the Prince of Darkness or "Ayatollah Mike", disappeared in Afghanistan last year, considered the brain of the CIA behind the murders of Bin Laden and the general Iranian Qassem Soleimani. One of the reasons why the US left the Bagram base at night on July 2 and without warning the Afghans was that they no longer trusted them. Bagram sounds like a warning to all American allies: they can be abandoned in the blink of an eye.

Nobody trusted anyone anymore and the US could no longer count on any allies for retreat. This was a key factor in the disaster. General Boris Gromov, the last commander of the 40th army in Afghanistan, in an interview with Sputnik in 2019 revealed that Moscow had maintained contact with some leaders of the Afghan mujahideen and made an agreement with the Tajik Shah Masood, who had led the fight against Soviet forces in Panshir. Thus it was Masood, the enemy, who guaranteed a safe passage for the Soviet troops.

And now the United States has to negotiate with the Taliban to evacuate a few hundred American citizens. They are the only useful allies they have in the field (apart from the Panshir Tajiks but under siege). Furthermore, they will also need their information to conduct any retaliatory acts against the Isis-Khorassan jihadists.

The Americans do not recognize the new regime in Kabul but this is smoke in the eyes of their Western allies: in fact they have returned Afghanistan to the Taliban with the Doha agreements, they have given them a gift in short, perhaps with the insight that they will now be Russia, China and regional players with Pakistan and Iran having to deal, for better or for worse, with the Afghan quagmire. There is always a quagmire, which moves like a pendulum between East and West, to trouble the great powers. We are waiting for the next one, to be chosen between the Sahel, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia.

(Extract from the post published by Negri on Facebook )